MNI BRIEF: Boston Fed, MIT Release Initial CBDC Study Findings

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Digital Currency Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Thursday released the findings of their initial technological research into a central bank digital currency.

The research, dubbed "Project Hamilton," looks at the technical challenges that need to be addressed when building a CBDC and is separate from a discussion paper the Fed board released last month that examined policy questions surrounding a digital dollar and sought public comment.

Researchers on Project Hamilton say they met their goal of creating a core processing engine for a hypothetical general purpose CBDC and code base capable of handling 1.7 million transactions per second. Researchers say their work will continue in a second phase over the next few years.